English graduate Bruno Atkinson (Balliol 2018) has directed and produced a short film, based on Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
Filmed in the Canary Islands, Profit Motive and the Endless Sea tells the story of the construction of the first desalination plant in Lanzarote, solving the problem of water, in parallel with that of The Tempest through excerpts from Prospero’s solemn monologues.
Bruno, who is now an independent film producer, came up with the idea after a Balliol friend, Emily Reed (2018), a feminist researcher, told him about the hydro-feminist potential of The Tempest. He then moved to Lanzarote for work, where, he says, ‘I was inspired by a group of artists who live and work with the history and culture of water on the island [and] discovered the documents, speeches and books that the engineers of the desalination plants have written since its installation in 1965. The way they spoke struck me as so similar to Shakespeare’s patriarch, there were so many parallels. So I chose to make a film that would use Shakespeare’s text, with its heavily subversive potential, to sort of denounce or pick holes in the narrative that the desalinators had created.’
Further information about the film explains that, beginning with the problem of there being no water on the island, it relates how the engineers ‘overcame the ancestral limitations of a semi-desertic island territory like Lanzarote’, bringing water to the taps of the people. But, it seems, this changed everything, not only for the better. The film finishes on a solemn line from The Tempest, ‘Dost thou forget from what a torment I did free thee?’ in a meditation about hope beyond capitalism.
Profit Motive and the Endless Sea is available here and streaming until 1 July.
For more information about Bruno’s work, see Bruno Atkinson Film.